The Presbyterian Polis - Connecting Churches to Churches

Love Christ, love the church, but the institution is another thing

Sky Jethani writes here and here about the distinction between the church as a community and the church as an institution. It is an important distinction as increasingly the institutional nature of the church is being rejected in favor of a wide variety of notions about community.

The modern church is a product of the same cultural forces that created the modern corporation. Americans have mastered the processes of organization so that virtually anything can be successfully produced and marketed, including religion.

What happened on the way to the creation of the modern organization was a loss of human connection within those organizational structures. We could say then that the organization lost its soul.  This is the situation that people who reject the institution of the church are claiming as their reasons for embracing community.

The reality is that every community if it is to develop sustainable vitality must develop some organizational structure. This is precisely the same thing as the institutionalization of organizations.

The solution? Actually it is fairly simple. It goes to the character of the individual who is willing to invest themselves in making the church more than a hang out, more than a social gathering point. At the heart of the character issue is the question of individual purpose or call. When that call is tied to a community's purpose beyond their own aggrandizement, it ultimately means that organization will result. It is how we achieve the things we want.

What I'm saying is that the issue of community versus institution is the wrong one. The deeper issue is the character of a person's relationship to Christ in terms of their call to ministry and service. When people gather together who share a common sense of call, organization develops that enables them to grow deeper in their friendships as well as in the impact of the life of their community.  The problem with institutionalism is that it lost the soul of personal call, and became a place of personal convenience. It salvation is to rediscover Christ's mission for the body and for those who are members of it.

Hope and the Character of Persistent Resilience

Hope. It is a theme that I hear increasingly discussed. 

It was the theme - Hope has a Voice - of the Montreat College Conference last weekend. 

I was there for part of it.  I was glad I was because I got to hear students from Virginia Tech who are involved with the Presbyterian Campus Ministry and the Blacksburg Presbyterian Church speak about the tragedy of the shootings last April. 

It was a story that was told with great finesse and pathos. It was as much the story of one freshman woman - Heidi Miller - who was shot and the people who are her friends at VirginiatTech and how they handled the tragedy.  She tells of how hope mattered as she faced her assailant.

“I learned that lesson for the first time in those first few moments I switched from being student at my desk to a student lying on the floor playing dead wondering whether I would ever make it out of that room in Norris Hall alive. Because that morning, as the smell of gun residue and blood penetrated my nostrils and blood seeped through my jeans and three bullets entered into my body, hope seemed far away — because he left the room, but came back in, he would run out of bullets, but then he would reload.” 

… “Evil was standing there embodied in this person standing four feet away from me, then it came -- hope found its way into that room.”  It first appeared when she began to move her left foot. “I realized that I wasn’t paralyzed and that my nerves still reached my foot despite the three bullets that had just entered my left side.”

Here's what I thought as I listened to their presentation.

1. Hope comes in human form. The stronger our care for one another is, the greater sense of God's care for us, and from that comes hope.

As Matt (Drumheller) stood around in the nearby hospital “waiting and waiting,” there came on a gurney “my friend Heidi (Miller), laying in a dazed, post-surgery state. She smiled at me.”  It was like “…God was standing right there beside me saying, ‘She’s alive.’”  Drumheller told the crowd, “God was right there beside me, beside all of us.”

2. Hope is a product of persistent resilience. What does this mean? We never give up. We never believe that all hope is lost. We continue to work and to strive for a better future.  Even at the darkest moments we believe that God is there.  I see this in these students. I see it in other people who have persisted in the face of disease, tragedy, disappointment, and all sorts of crisis in their lives.

From Heidi Miller:

 

During and following a hospital stay, the support of family and friends continued to renew her hope, along with the hard work of physical therapy.  “ …and my faith was there to remind me that somehow this was all going to find a way to work out, and inside myself I found a way to hang onto the person I was before but also make room for this new facet of my life.” ...

 

This past fall semester was an “emotional mountain” for her to climb, she told her peers. “There were times when things got hard, really hard, but I had to keep pushing along.  …  Hope was hard to find at the times when I found myself facing rock bottom.”

3. Hope is a belief that whatever the story is today, it is not the whole story. And much of the rest of the story is determined by our own attitudes, decisions and actions.

Again from Heidi:

 

Looking back on the whole experience she reflected, “That morning of April 16^th in my French classroom in Norris Hall I saw evil in its purest form. I faced someone who had no hope at all.” She has not tried to psychoanalyze the killer.  But, “the only way I can conceptualize it in my head [how] this happened is that he had no hope, no hope at all, and that is where his hopeless path led him.”  This is as close as she has come to an answer, she says, “and I’ve come to terms with that.”

Heidi closed her remarks by quoting from her first post-incident journal entry, 12 days after the shooting: I never thought that this journal would go from being about the frivolous trivial things that occurred during my super awkward freshman year to a journal chronicling my life as I recover from the physical and emotional trauma of being shot. I am glad I had at least one year of innocence in college.  I know that somehow it will teach me and has taught me way more about life than I ever thought I would learn by the end of the year. The rest of my life won’t be conventional. That could be viewed as a bad thing, but in my mind and one thing that I am not ashamed to talk about now is how I know now more than ever that I am destined for something greater in life, something else is out there for me to accomplish and I have more motivation than ever to seek out those goals.

 

Hope is not some abstract notion but a gift we receive from God. It is a portion of grace and love given as we face the future. As these students learned, and was affirmed to me, that God is with us, even at our most darkest moments.

Jack Haberer has an excellent article in the Presbyterian Outlook on their presentation. Share with people who will be encourage to have hope when everything seems against it.

The quotes are from Jack's article.

Bonhoeffer's After Ten Years for our time

For past couple of months, I've been drawn to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  His short book Life Together has been a helpful perspective in a church world torn between artificial triumphalism and institutional cynicism.   It's about how real people engage one another through their faith in Christ and in their relationships with one another.

Lately, I have been reading portions from The Cost of Discipleship and Ethics trying to grasp who this man was. I find his perspective on the Christian faith and the church totally different from most of the people I know and read today.

A couple days ago, I ran into United Methodist pastor colleague Tony Sayer at the bookstore. After a wide ranging discussion that lasted over an hour, I told him I was reading Bonhoeffer. His eyes lit up. He's a Bonhoeffer devotee and after some discussion, suggested I read a piece Bonhoeffer wrote in 1942, not many months before he was arrested by the German Gestapo. So, I went home, dug through a box of books and found my 40 year old copy of Letters and Papers from Prison. The copy I have is not the expanded edition that is now available.  I've ordered it and its on the way here.

The essay that Tony suggested is After Ten Years.  It is his reflections on his work and life in the context of the rise of National Socialism under the Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler.  His thoughts are not historical, but more personal and spiritual.  I find them quite relevant to our time.

Bonhoeffer speaks of the radical evilness of evil of the Third Reich and the multitude of failed attempts to confront it.

The failure of rationalism is evident.  With best of intentions, but with a naive lack of realism, the rationalist imagines that a small dose of reason will be enough to put the world right.  In his short-sightedness he wants to do justice to all sides, but in the melee of conflicting forces he gets trampled upon without having achieved the slightest effect. Disappointed by the irrationality of the world, he realises at last his futility, retires from the fray, and weakly surrenders to the winning side.

Worse still is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. The fanatic imagines his moral purity will prove a match for the power of evil, but like a bull he goes for the red rag instead of the man who carries it, grows weary and succumbs.  He becomes entangled with non-essentials and falls into the trap set by the superior ingenuity of his adversary.

Then there is the man with a conscience.  He fights single-handed against overwhelming odds in situations which demand a decision.  But are so many conflicts going on, all of which demand some vital choice - with no advice or support save that of his own conscience - that he is torn to pieces.  Evil approaches him in so many specious and deceptive guises that his conscience becomes nervous and vacillating.  In the end he contents himself with a salved instead of a clear conscience, and starts lying to his conscience as a means of avoiding despair. If a man relies exclusively on his conscience he fails to see how a bad conscience is sometimes more wholesome and strong than a deluded one.

When men are confronted by a bewildering variety of alternatives, the path of duty seems to offer a sure way out. They grasp at the imperative as the one certainty.  The responsibility for the imperative rests upon its author, not upon its executor. But when men are confined to the limits of duty, they never risk a daring deed on their own responsibility, which is the only way to score a bull's eye against evil and defeat it. Then man of duty will in the end be forced to give the devil his due.

What then of the man of freedom?   He is the man who aspires to stand his ground in the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than a clear conscience or the duties of his calling, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise or a barren mediocrity for a fruitful radicalism.  What then of him?  He must beware lest his freedom should become his own undoing.  For in choosing the lesser of two evils he may fail to see the greater evil he seeks to avoid may prove the lesser. Here we have the raw material of tragedy.

Some seek refuge from the rough-and-tumble of public life in the sanctuary of their own private virtue.  Such men however are compelled to seal their lips and shut their eyes to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep themselves pure from the defilements incurred by responsible action.  For all that they achieve, that which they leave undone will still torment their peace of mind. They will either go to pieces in face of this disquiet, or develop into the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

Who stands his ground? Only the man whose ultimate criterion is not in his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedience and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God. The responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God.

I find this a relevant discussion concerning  the future of the church. There are so many attempts to address the central crisis of our age - the purpose and function of the church in the 21st century. Much of this crisis is institutional, justifiably so. Yet, that is not really where the problem begins.

Instead, the problem begins with what does it mean to live as a Christian. This question is what I find in Bonhoeffer that challenges my whole perception of what it means to be a Christian. It shows itself in how dependent I am on structure and tradition.  What comes to mind as I read Bonhoeffer is not the crisis of the church against the culture of an evil regime like the Nazis, but the church in conflict with Christ at its very core.

The various approaches to address the National Socialist threat that Bonhoeffer describes above reminds me of the various approaches that we are trying to use to fix the structure and function of the church. Bonhoeffer speaks of the lack of civil courage in Germany during these ten years, though not the lack of bravery and self-sacrifice.

In the course of a long history we Germans have had to learn the necessity and the power of obedience. The subordination of all individual desires and opinions to the call of duty has given meaning and nobility to life.  We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing our duty as a call, and the call as a vocation.  This readiness to follow a command from above rather than our own private opinion of what was best was a sign of a legitimate self-distrust.  Who can deny that in obedience, duty and calling we Germans have again and again excelled in bravery and self-sacrifice? ... The trouble was we did not understand his world.  He forgot that submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends.

He then discusses the ethics of success as no better for understanding where one fits in history.

All the time goodness is successful we can afford the luxury of regarding success as having no ethical significance. But the problem arises when success is achieved by evil means. It is no good then behaving as an arm-chair critic and disputing the issue, for that is to refuse to face the facts.  Nor is opportunism any help, for that is to capitulate before success.  We must be determined not to be outraged critics or mere opportunists.  We must take our full share of responsibility for the moulding of history, whether it be as victors or vanquished.

Bonhoeffer points to a responsibility that is ours given to us by God. The question that I have is what does it mean to be responsible in our time. What does it mean for the church to bear the responsibility for history as he describes it?

To read Bonhoeffer is to be struck hard with the reality that this is a man whose engagement with the world was so complete that his relationship with Christ had come to replace his relationship to the church. For most of us, the church serves as the place where we find God. Without the church there is no faith that is secure and real. This is why, I suspect, that the early Calvinists were so adamant about the place of visual and sensual representations of Christ. That these worldly objects could easily come to replace the living God in Jesus Christ as a result. Is this what has happened in churches? This is what I believe lies behind Bonhoeffer's discussion of folly.

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than malice.  You can protest against malice, you can unmask it or prevent it by force. ... There is no defence against folly. Neither protests nor force are of any avail against it, and it is never amenable to reason. If facts contradict personal prejudices, there is no need to believe them, and if they are undeniable, they can simply be pushed aside as exceptions.  Thus the fool, as compared with the scoundrel, is invariably self-complacent.

Folly, Bonhoeffer writes, is a moral rather than an intellectual defect.

The fool can often be stubborn, but this must not mislead us into thinking he is independent. One feels somehow, especially in conversation with him, that it is impossible to talk to the man himself, to talk to him personally.  Instead, one is confronted with a series of slogans, watchwords, and the like, which have acquired power over him.  He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very humanity is being prostituted and exploited.  Once he has surrendered his will and become a mere tool, there are no lengths of evil to which the fool will not go, yet all the time he is unable to see that it is evil.  Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation of humanity, which can do irreparable damage to the human character.

But it is just at this point that we realise that the fool cannot be saved by education.  What he needs is redemption. ... the only cure for folly is spiritual redemption, for that alone can enable a man to live as a responsible person in the sight of God.

This redemption is not simply joining a church, becoming a member and joining a program. Rather this is the transformation of the whole person to be one who is totally available to God.  This is what it means to be responsible and free. It also means that many of the "things" of this world become constraints or entanglements that rob us of our freedom. The problem with many prophets and ministries that call for absolute discipleship accompanying vows of poverty is that they are like the rationalist, the fanatic, or the moralist who intellectually or emotionally tries to change the world by sheer will.  It rises from that sense of duty that gets confused and clouded in the multitude of motivations that rob us of our freedom.

What my reading of Bonhoeffer leads me to see that this responsible, spiritually mature person is simply a whole human being.  We aren't to be some super-heroic super-spiritual being whose accomplishments and failures are on some grand scale. Rather, we are to live our human lives as the beings God created us to be. All the things I've quoted from Bonhoeffer above have pointed to how our human lives become diminished in so many ways. The problem with these various paths to perfection is that they result in de-humanizing us and therefore affecting our attitude toward others.  Here is what Bonhoeffer says about those who hold such a contempt for humanity.

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity.  We know full well that it would be very wrong, and that it would lead to the most sterile relation with our fellow men.  ... The man who despises others can never hope to do anything with them.  The faults we despise in others are always, to some extent at least, our own too.  How often have we expected from others more  than we are prepared to do ourselves!  Why have we until now held such lofty views about human nature? Why have we not recognised its frailty and liability to temptation?   We must form our estimate of men less from their achievements and failures, and more from their sufferings.  The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to our weaker brethren - is one of love, that is the will to hold fellowship with them. Even God did not despise humanity, but became Man for man's sake.

For Bonhoeffer, as we well as it should be for each of us, how we relate to the other individual is where the practicality of our faith is formed. From this simple, basic approach to our relationships with people can grow the ability to demonstrate the kind of civic courage that he practiced in his own ministry.  It simply becomes how we act in love towards others, regardless of who they are.

With a matter of a few months of Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing this letter to friends in 1942, the Gestapo came and arrested Bonhoeffer, and within two years he was hanged for his leadership of the church in Germany.  Eberhard Bethge, friend and biographer of Bonhoeffer, in the introduction to Letters and Papers from Prison,  tells the story of what the man was like during his emprisonment.

Bonhoeffer's last weeks were spent with prisoners drawn from all over Europe. Among them was Payne Best, an English officer. ... Best writes: "Bonhoeffer ... was all humility and sweetness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive. ... He was one of the very few men that I have ever met to whom his God was real and close to him."  And again, "The following day, Sunday, April 8th, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer held a little service and spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right worlds to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought.  He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: ' Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us.'  Those words 'come with us' - for all prisoners that had come to mean one thing only - the scaffold.

"We bade him good-bye - he drew me aside - ' This is the end,' he said. 'For me the beginning of life,' ... Next day, at Flossenburg, he was hanged."

We live in a time of great change and ferment in the church. We have church schisms in our own denomination. We have Megachurches that are questioning methods and whose leaders are examples of moral failure in tragic ways. We have churches emerging as communities and communities that are emerging as places of hope and love in cities. All the foundations of the church are being shaken to see what will remain.

What I am finding as I travel this journey of spiritual and ecclesiastical change is that the Christ that gave Bonhoeffer joy and peace at the time of his execution is real. The church is not the whole faith, but one place where we meet God, find nurture and nourishment, focus and replenishment for the lives we are to live outside.  While I am a realist, it is my faith and the experience of it that teaches me to be an optimist. Thank God for the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

What it means to be a Missional Leader.

Watch this discussion on being a missional church and a missional leader between Al Roxburgh and Pat Keifert at the new Allelon website.

Their discussion on leadership presents a very important insight.

Leadership is not just a bunch of skills thrown at a goal.  Instead it is the function of personal character in the action required for the moment that leads forward or makes a difference. The actions though are not the big ones. Rather, leadership is the character of the person in the moment.

Pat Keifert talks about leadership as a factor of time not position. Listen to what he says. I think he is absolutely correct about this.  Leadership isn't simply skills applied toward a goal. Rather it is preparation for the moment when the appropriate response is required.

This means not only do leaders invest themselves in developing Ideas, Relationships and Structure, but they do so in each moment that they live.  Character in this sense is understood by the actions or initiative that the leader takes. 

This living in the moment means that every moment is in some way a test of who I am as a leader.  What am I doing right now to take initiative to develop the Ideas, the Relationships, and the Structures needed to fulfill the opportunity that has just been placed in my lap. 

A missional church perspective sees the God-given opportunity in the moment, and acts to meet that opportunity.

I'm coming to realize this more and more. It is paradoxical.  We are focused on the specific mission God calls us to do. We take initiative through the dimensions of Ideas, Relationships and Structure to fulfill that mission. Yet, we wait patiently for what God will put before us. 

I've learned to be more in the moment this week, or rather less hurried to act without it being a response in the moment to what God has put before me.

One way to see how this is developing is to look at my client list over the past year.  If you did, you'd see something totally different than in the previous ten years.  There are more 1000-plus member churches as clients, each with a different need and opportunity. There is a mechanical contracting firm that needs help organizing as a management team. There is an electric utility that wants a values statement. And as of this morning, an association of realtors who want a presentation on the Four Questions.  There are individuals in Texas who want to use my charts, in Ireland who need a listening ear, and in Singapore who need help managing a office crisis.  Each is unique and came out of the blue.  Yet, each came at the right moment because, I assume, I was prepared to respond at that moment.

The other day I was having a discussion with a friend about Lent, and the conversation ventured over to talking about living in the moment.  I said that I really don't know what the future holds. Nothing in my past, whether ancient or recent, gives me any indication of what God has planned.  As a result, my daily discipline is to be prepared to respond to what comes into view, trusting that somehow I'll know what I am supposed to do.

Don't think that this is some intentional plan executed well.  Quite the opposite.  Even though I am a planner, I would never have planned to be where I am today. And I can't imagine being any where else. 

Leadership is like this in that we are called to do what must be done right now to move forward.  Being missional is many things, but more than anything it is learning to live so that the opportunities for mission that are placed in our path in the next twenty minutes will have the prospects of being fulfilled.

Never in a million years would I have thought this is where I would end up. Yet, this I know, that God gives us just enough to keep us going - our daily bread - and that as we live further into the moment, the moments get bigger.  The reality of God's presence, goodness, grace and love become greater.  They also lose some of that artificial religiosity that accompanies so many planned spiritual development projects.

How do you become that kind of leader? 

You have to stop looking beyond the person in front of you as if there is something better.  You must ask, why has God brought this person into my presence. What is my responsibility to act in relation to this person, and be responsible to not over reach appropriate boundaries of accountability. 

I'm convinced that the only way to prepare for these moments is to learn to take initiative in the realm of Ideas, Relationships and Organizational Structure.  When these come together in a compelling, coherent, integrated way, then your ability to lead in the moment will have grown beyond just being a visionary, or a friend or a manager.  You will be a leader who sees the God-given opportunity in the moment.

HT: Bill Kinnon

Reflecting on PUP

The PUP Report passed.

People will say what they will.

Have ordination standards changed? Not technically. 

Have ordinations been applied with local considerations in the past? Definitely. 

How do I know? Look at the wide diversity of ministers in the church.  If there is some uniform standard for ordination, then I don't see in in the pulpit.

Does this take a national issue into the local congregation and presbyteries? Yes. At least there, we have a chance of being civic about our differences, and working them out together becasue we serve the same local context. 

Here's the test for both liberals and conservatives.  This is a test of your character, your integrity and your ability to live within the governing structure of the denomination. 

You can choose to use this change as an opportunity to forward your own narrow agenda.  It is narrow.  It is an agenda.  It is not the church's mission.  It is your agenda.  Now you have a choice.  You can work together to insure that candidates for ordination are qualified, or you can play politics and continue to gut the heart and soul of the church.

It is your choice.

The rest of us will continue to do what we have been doing.  Daily trying to figure out how to get a long with people with whom we disagree.

Is this report the answer to the church's problems? No. The answer is not in the action of the General Assembly.  The answer is in each individual member, congregration and presbytery living the Gospel out together.

Do liberals and conservatives need one another?  Depends on what kind of church you want. 

Do you want a church that reflects the political course of the nation? Then they have done an excellent job of leading the church in that direction. 

Do you want one that lives in the tension of the Gospel?  Then we may be able to live with that, and live to see the church survive another generation.

Am I pessimistic about the church's future? No. Absolutely not. 

Am I bothered by our decline as a denomination? Yes.  Absolutely. 

Are we in a long protracted transition from a church that has lost its identity to one that will be much clearer about what our mission is?  Yes, definitely.  I see that happening.  And where it isn't.

Do British youth seek spirituality?

Bill Kinnon points to an interesting report by the Church of England that presents a not very flattering picture of the spiritual interests of young people. It shows these British youth as having little or no spiritual interest.

I don't think this is what you would find in America. The spiritual decline of old Europe can be seen in this report. For kids, religion is okay, rather innocuous and not that much of a waste of time.

What do they believe in? Personal happiness.

The question that I always ask when confronted with someone whose life is oriented around their personal happiness is whether they would sacrifice their life for me if it meant saving mine. This is the ultimate test of character. What are you willing to die for? I'd say the kids they interviewed for the report would find it hard to identify anything they would risk their life for, unless it is their own personal happiness.

Technorati Tags: Youth, Church of England

Should the church be culturally isolationist?

For the past almost seven years, I've spent more time reading ancient writers, like Aristotle, than I have modern literary greats.  My college buddy and philosopher, Tom Morris, introduced me to Aristotle, and I found a soul mate in concrete, practical philosophy.  Odd for a Presbyterian, but that is the way it is.  (BTW, Barnes & Noble has a pocket-size edition of Aristotle's Ethics and Politics for $5.95. It would be a good way to be introduced to his thought.)

What I have discovered is that there is a strain of isolationism within the Christian body.  By isolationist, I'm not pointing back to the right wing Republicans of the late 1930s, early 1940s who wanted to keep the US out of World War II.  I'm talking about a cultural isolationism that does not understand that the church must be engaged not just a critique of culture, but the formation of culture.  Critiques of consumerist, entertainment obsessed culture are a dime-a-dozen, and have almost no impact upon that culture.  Why? Because it offers no alternative.  There is no replacement culture that the church can offer, as it currently exists. 

I'm talking about the deeper issues of culture that exist as a foundation of the church.  In the larger scheme of things, I've come to the conclusion that the church's abandonment of Western culture is mistaken.  There is too much diversity within the Christian church for a common culture to develop.  It is the external culture of Western civilization that is our culture, and we abandon it at our peril.

Technorati Tags: Western civilization, Mark Steyn, ancient Greece, ancient Rome

People, Ecclesiastical Accountability and Sin

As Presbyterians, we are probably more obsessed with process, procedure and organizational structure than any other denomination.  It is part of our core belief that the priesthood of all believers is not just a slogan, but also an operational principle.  Hence, our Sessions, our Presbyteries, our Synods and the General Assembly consists of both lay and clergy members.

The challenge of this egalitarian system is the same with any large bureaucratic organization.  How do we understand accountability?  Sure, we can say it resides in the governing bodies, but what are the governing bodies, but representatives of other governing bodies serving for a short period of time.  In essence, there is no operational accountability, only legislative authority. 

Of course, churches call pastors, Presbyteries call Executive or General Presbyters, Synods called their executives, and the General Assembly council hires their own executive, the State Clerk and elects a Moderator as the leader of the church.

But, for the most part, these are administrative officers, not leaders.  They are executives in the same mold of any Fortune 500 corporation.  And the dilemma of leadership in both settings is the same.

Too often organizational structure and systems are blamed for the decline of the church.  I have heard throughout my life complaints about Presbytery doing this or not doing that thing.  We all have heard complaints about General Assembly and its staff.  And too often they are all painted with the same brush of derision.

Whatever problems there are in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the answer is not organizational structure.  The answer is with people.

Technorati Tags: Sin, Organizational Structure, Accountability, Church Leadership

Why the Polis? 2

The question why use the idea of the Greek polis as a metaphor for the church is one that people will have as they venture past this blog.  As a consultant to churches in planning and leadership development, I see things differently than many people.  While the traditional metaphors of the church, "the Body of Christ," "the City of God," "the people of God," "the bride of Christ," etc. are helpful in deriving the meaning of what it means to be the church, there are not many metaphors that help us understand how to function as the church. 

Hence, I use polis or city-state because it speaks to certain aspects of communal life that these more theological/biblical concepts do not.

Technorati Tags: Polis, church

Thoughts on Clergy Moral Character

Two ministry colleagues recently resigned their positions because of what was termed "inappropriate behavior."  I don't know their story, and don't really want to know.  But the instance of another minister having to resign because of moral failure saddens me and raises all sorts of questions in my mind.

Is resignation the right path?  I wonder... how is he going to support his family?  Who is going to hire him?  How do you reclaim your dignity and trustworthiness as a pastor?  Is submitting to counseling a sufficient form of penance? 

How did they get themselves into this situation?  My rule of thumb whenever tempted is this - Is this person worth losing everything over - my family and my ministry, calling, career and future, my reputation in the community, my relationship with friends?  Is it worth it?

Much of my work as a consultant I work directly with the leadership of churches and organizations.  In the past as I became more comfortable with them and they with me, I'd ask, "If you were to fail at this, fail horribly and completely, who would stand by you?"  Too often their response was silence.  They did not know who truly believed in them, cared for them, would stand by them in a crisis.

That is sad.  It is also symbolic of the loss of our humanity expressed in relationships of trust, caring and mutuality.

Church governing bodies can't create this.  The Body of Christ must. We must be people in relationship that provide for the restoration of people who have failed, in whatever manner.

One last thought...How to avoid becoming a statistic.

I think it is preparing ourselves for the situations that put us in jeopardy.  It is a mental discipline of knowing what the signs of our weakness are, and planning ahead, disciplining ourselves to react in the appropriate way when we are tested.

Within the church, throughout my lifetime, the practice has been to avoid all contact with the temptations of the world.  It has not kept people from falling into sin.  And it has create the situation where people are forced out of their fellowship when they fall. 

I believe that we have to face reality squarely.  We have to understand that their are lonely people for whom sexual intimacy is what they long for, no matter from who they get it.  We have to understand that their are sexual predators who are looking for people who are ill-prepared for their advances.  We have to understand that we are people, just like those people, and it is the structure of relationships that provides the buffer against our falling.

If you know people who have failed, and you call yourself a friend, then I encourage you to call them, send them a note or visit with them in person, not to correct them, but to care for them at their moment of need.  That is what we are called to do as Christ's people.  It is redemptive, counter-cultural and transformative for us and the church.